I can't see how that's possible, since the value added approach specifically tracks CHANGES in a student's score, meaning they have to be tracking the student from year-to-year.
It also complete ignores how challenging a teacher is, and how tough they are on grading. Conservatives are always complaining about how teachers shouldn't coddle those who want to be in class - but a teacher that hands out lots of homework, no extra credit and no curves will have lower scores than a teacher that does the opposite.
Okay, so now you're admitting you didn't read the article at all and you're just spouting what you believe about the study. The study is based on changes from year-to-year of student scores on STANDARDIZED TESTS. Grading, extra credit, curves, and homework have NO BEARING WHATSOEVER ON THESE NUMBERS.
It feels more like a company deciding to exploit the stubbornness of a group of D&D players by pandering to their tendencies to resist change, which I suppose could be considered as just like T$R with its shameless grab for money under the mask of serving the playerbase.
I dunno. I liked the move from 2nd to 3rd (though I still have a special place in my heart for 2nd and recently started buying some books to rerun I6: Ravenloft this Halloween). And I really liked the move from 3rd to 3.5. To me, 2nd->3rd seemed more like house cleaning--creating unified systems instead of separate tables and rule sets for EVERYTHING. But I'm a computer scientist, I like consistency... So I'm biased.
I don't think 4th Edition is a bad game, I just think its mechanics are too different to be considered D&D... But WotC's goal was to attract new players, they don't care about the old players, they already have our money.:)
That, and WotC changing campaign settings to match the new rules really ticked me off...
Look at the Reserve Feats in Complete Mage if you want a 3.5 Wizard/Sorcerer with some more staying power. Gives you at-will abilities based on the spells you have memorized with the power of the ability determined by the level of the spell. For instance, a fire based attack that does 1d6 damage per level of the highest level fire spell you have memorized.
Otherwise I'd suggest Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords, which is where they essentially prototyped the 4th edition rules in 3.5. Fair warning, though, the three classes in ToB are pretty overpowered compared to the base classes in PHB. There's practically no reason to ever play a Paladin when you could play a Crusader, or play a Fighter when you can play a Warblade, for instance...
There's also the Warlock class (from Complete Arcane, I think?), which has a ridiculous ranged touch attack blast every round and a bunch of "invocation" spell-like abilities... I don't like the class, though, because a player in one of my groups always plays very munchkiny builds with it...
See, I was going to pre-order Dragon Age, but I put it back on the shelf when I saw it wasn't multiplayer. I have a stack of single player games waiting for me to finish. I want something to play with my wife, not something to sit alone and play by myself.
If you toss out the teacher who has to teach the worst students because of failing test scores, and you replace that teacher with the best teacher in the school, then you'll probably end up firing that teacher as well when the test scores don't improve.
That's not what this study is showing, however. It's not showing "Teacher A's students are consistently bad." it's showing "Teacher A's students are consistently WORSE after a year in his or her class than they were beforehand."
So why would anyone argue to remove the bad apples from the teacher pool without also arguing to remove the bad apples from the student pool?
Because the students aren't being paid to be there.
I know this is Slashdot and all... Could you be bothered to even slightly learn anything about the source's methods?
The study tracks scores from year to year... And it shows that there are certain teachers who consistently bring scores down, and other teachers who consistently bring scores up. Since students are assigned practically randomly, if it was all down to how hard the students tried we wouldn't see that.
After all, there are zero consequences to their political careers for prosecuting someone unjustly, and yet there are repercussions for going "soft" on criminals.
Oh there's not always ZERO consequences to their political careers... At least, not when they prosecute rich white kids... Though, really, one day in jail isn't enough for such ridiculous prosecutor misconduct...
That's funny... I was homeschooled (primarily due to not wanting to deal with the bullshit "social interaction" of schoolyard bullies), and the head developer where I work came to me to ask me to coach other developers on "people skills" because she felt I was one of the best examples of good "people skills" on the team... Weird how my anecdotal evidence completely contradicts yours, isn't it?
That Rewards type card gets you a $5 coupon for $150 in purchases. So you have to spend more money there to enjoy your 3.33% "reward". The B&N card gets you 10% off everything. The B&N card also has weekly coupons like $5 off a $50 purchase (giving you effectively 20% off a $50 purchase) that are sent to you whether or not you use the card.
You can't really complain about the borders card... Any free discount is a good discount. But the B&N card will save a frequent shopper significantly more over time, but won't provide any benefit to occasional customers. If you don't shop there that often, you can give them an e-mail address and they will mail you free coupons once or twice a week, usually on new releases and seasonal items (like the current one is for back-to-school supplies)... Which I'd think would average out to be just about as good as the free Borders Bucks program.
People still "special order" stuff at stores? Wow. Hard Boiled is $8 from Amazon, no tax and free shipping. How much did B&N charge you?
This was like five years ago, so I haven't the faintest idea what they charged me. The disk for $8 on Amazon didn't exist, then. I also get an employee discount, but that's not the point. Point is, the majority of people STILL DON'T order online, and probably over half of those people NEVER will. So until they're all dead, a service like B&N's music/movie section will have a use... But not enough of one to survive on its own (see: Suncoast)
Also Amazon has been very hit-or-miss for me. I've ordered CDs, been charged, then told "We expect your order to ship in six weeks!" I've also ordered other merchandise via Amazon on two separate occasions only to get angry e-mails from the merchant wanting to know why I'm placing orders for out-of-stock merchandise, and telling me that I need to pay more attention... Still never got a Revoltech Lazengann:(
This is where they lose me, I don't want to be badgered into being a member of their store, let alone pay for the privilege. Throw in the horrendous pricing in their DVD and CD section and suddenly I find myself comparing all prices or desiring to hit the net to see if I can find it cheaper. Membership "rewards" never come across as friendly, let alone one I have to pay for.
My wife is a lead at our local B&N, so let me see if I can enlighten you a bit...
Paying $25 for a B&N membership does make a lot of sense for some people. It's a 10% discount on everything bought there (including the coffee and ON TOP of the 30-40% discount on things like new hardcovers), so if you spend $251.00 in a year at B&N, you've made money back. Now most people WON'T spend $250.00 a year there, but there are people who regularly spend over $250.00 a MONTH in there, and not taking the card would be insane. My wife has been flabbergasted by customers who are making a $500.00 purchase and won't take the card (essentially getting paid $25 to take it) because "You don't have to pay for Borders' card!" Last I checked, Borders' card is a "Rewards Card" type deal that eventually gives you a gift certificate after so many dollars worth of purchases as opposed to a flat discount, so I can understand why you don't have to pay for it... Removing the $25 fee, though, would be functionally equivalent to reducing their income by 10%, which doesn't seem to be a smart move for a chain trying to stay in business...
Secondly, the CD and DVD section isn't there to sell you the latest popular movies/albums (though they happily eat up the obscene profits from people buying them there). Why would you buy Avatar from them for $30 when it's available at Best Buy for $22 (Or the Wal-Mart double disc pack for $20)? What they do provide is an insanely large back-catalog of old/obscure films and audio. The kid at Best Buy looked at me cross-eyed when I asked him to order me "Hard Boiled" ("Order? You mean like online? And what's 'Hard Boiled'?"), while B&N offered for me to have it shipped to my house or brought in for in-store-pickup. Want that ten disc set of great violen concerts at Carnegie Hall? Good luck finding that Best Buy or Sam Goody, but you'd better believe B&N can get it for you. Looking for indie albums with very small releases? They can get it shipped to you from the store where that artists plays. Yes, plays, as in B&N music sections go out of their way to stock local artists and bring them in for signings and performances.
So I completely understand why B&N's membership service and Music section are not for you, but believe me when I say that there ARE people who enjoy them very much.
Fine, first show me that accomplished (active, long-term storage solution) and then we can have a discussion about opening new nuclear plants.
* [Citation needed.] To my understanding, no long-term repositories for nuclear waste have actually been used anywhere in the world.
No, don't move the goalposts. What I specifically said was that the waste problem was made up. What we're calling "waste" is, for the most part, very useful material that can be further used for power generation in addition to numerous medical and scientific applications. Burying it in the ground is exactly the WRONG thing to do with it. In the past we HAVE successfully reprocessed spent fuel and extracted the useful bits out of it. The reason people are scared of the process is we didn't call it "reprocessing" so much as "making atomic bombs," but it doesn't have to be used for that.
Once we've extracted the useful bits (which make up the vast majority of the "waste" mass), then we can talk about storage.
Oh wait, except that we don't have to. The left-over low level crap can be further used in things like pebble-bed reactor designs, so we've reduced our "waste" footprint even further.
The final remaining miniscule amount can be glassified and stored in some dry tomb somewhere.
And saying "No one has actually done this before!" is a lousy argument for not doing something--if it's your only argument.
The Yucca mountain facility is not a waste containment center, it's a radiation containment facility that holds the items through their decomposition period.
While I believe it to be a monumentally expensive endeavor and positively way too "modern marvel"''ish, I figured I'd clear that up since the whole water running thing came into play.
I fail to see how that in any way invalidates what I said.
Our power distribution currently is a power distribution system alone and has nothing to do with how the energy is made. It's a delivery system, alone....
Ecologically the creation method is healthier, but solar is never to be discounted since it's inevitably ecologically free energy.
Until the sun sets, which is when a lot of demand happens, and suddenly solar isn't producing any more. This is fine for coal/natural gas/nuclear plants and even (in most cases) hydroelectric plants, as we just turn the dial up on them and get more electricity out of them. We can't do that with solar or wind power, as we don't have any control over how much they produce at any given time. Hence my comment about storage--depending on solar/wind will require massive investment in energy storage and require a major reworking of how we handle demand on the network. So, yes, it does matter where the power comes from.
Also, unless I missed some really amazing developments, solar does require materials with which to actually build the panels, some of which are not nice. Saying it's ecologically free isn't quite the truth. Better? Sure, but poisons and fossil fuels are still used in their production.
So we agree that there's no actually-being-done way to deal with the waste.
Yes, I agree, we're being idiots. So let's stop being stupid and SAVE HUMAN CIVILIZATION! The tech already exists, we did it in the past--all that's stopping us is stupid policy decisions, not any technical hurdles.
Except if new insights require the wast to be dug up, like in the German salt mines. This dug up will be paid by the state of course, because it is in the public interest.
Yeah, except the case you're linking to is a poster child for NOT how to dispose of the waste. Piling up barrels haphazardly into an area where ground water flows in and out is monumentally stupid. That's why I used the word "glassified" and gave an example of Yucca Mountain.
Insurance also is such a factor. the first 10 Billion (US situation) is insured by the plants, anything over that would be paid by taxes. Compare that to the cost of Chernobyl ( ~ 235 Billion) or 3 mile island (close to a billion). You will not have to take such insurance on solar power or wind power, (not sure on hydro power).
And yet despite the insurance costs, nuclear will still be cheaper and probably more sustainable and will not require a complete reworking of our power network. Solar and Wind require STORAGE capabilities, of which we have NONE. Our power distribution is entirely based on increasing PRODUCTION to meet demand, not STORING energy to offset future demand spikes. Nuclear reactors will fit directly into our current network without requiring any massive changes in how we do things.
Also, don't call up the spectre of Chernobyl. If I wanted to cause billions of dollars of damage via sabotage (which is practically what that event was), I don't need a nuclear reactor to do it. A large chemical plant or oil pipeline will suffice.
Waste disposal is a made up problem. That "waste" is very useful. Reprocessing it recovers almost all of the original fissionable mass, and the other products have medical and scientific applications. The remaining low-level crap can be glassified and dropped into a Yucca Mountain like storage depot (except that people's ignorance regarding nuclear waste and radioactivity makes them panic about that).
But you see, there's the difference in viewpoint. I consider the life of others to have equal value, whereas you apear to consider the life of others to have the value they place on their own life.
I'll have to respectfully disagree. Though your misunderstanding is probably my own fault in lack of explanation.
I do find other's lives to be equally valuable to my own--in fact, probably of greater value in many cases. I would be very saddened by someone throwing themselves in front of my car as they were someone who needed help.
A mugger holding someone up via the threatened use of lethal force, however, has forfeited any value their life once held to me. They are threatening the most sacred right of another sentient being for material gain. It is BECAUSE of the value I place on their victim's life that I consider the mugger to be worthless scum to be scraped off of humanity's collective boot.
I mean if someone threw themself in front of my car, I'd be pretty distraught about that as well, and do whatever it took to prevent injury even though it was entirely their intention to do so.
Well, no crap! They might damage your car! And when they're dead, who's gonna pay for it?
Seriously, though, apples and oranges. Hitting the person diving in front of your car is putting yourself in danger (though swerving to miss him or her may be putting others in danger, something to think about...) Shooting the dumb fuck who decided your money was worth more than his life is taking yourself out of danger. No comparison.
From a cursory glance I fail to see how Evernote will help me in keeping track of other people's documentation, which is hosted/updated on their websites... Evernote also lacks a Linux client (and OneNote is a Microsoft product, so fat chance on ever getting Linux support there...)
Maybe I don't understand, but I don't see how my use-case fits their purpose, or how using them would be better than what I'm currently using.
Yeah, the light gun was a glorious hack that took advantage of knowing exactly what scan lines the ducks were flashing on to work... So any kind of delay will make it not work at all, I'm sure.
Wow, I'll be sad when Duck Hunt can no longer be played... Oh well, that's what emulation is for.:D
Slashdot Mirror
I can't see how that's possible, since the value added approach specifically tracks CHANGES in a student's score, meaning they have to be tracking the student from year-to-year.
Okay, so now you're admitting you didn't read the article at all and you're just spouting what you believe about the study. The study is based on changes from year-to-year of student scores on STANDARDIZED TESTS. Grading, extra credit, curves, and homework have NO BEARING WHATSOEVER ON THESE NUMBERS.
I dunno. I liked the move from 2nd to 3rd (though I still have a special place in my heart for 2nd and recently started buying some books to rerun I6: Ravenloft this Halloween). And I really liked the move from 3rd to 3.5. To me, 2nd->3rd seemed more like house cleaning--creating unified systems instead of separate tables and rule sets for EVERYTHING. But I'm a computer scientist, I like consistency... So I'm biased.
I don't think 4th Edition is a bad game, I just think its mechanics are too different to be considered D&D... But WotC's goal was to attract new players, they don't care about the old players, they already have our money. :)
That, and WotC changing campaign settings to match the new rules really ticked me off...
Look at the Reserve Feats in Complete Mage if you want a 3.5 Wizard/Sorcerer with some more staying power. Gives you at-will abilities based on the spells you have memorized with the power of the ability determined by the level of the spell. For instance, a fire based attack that does 1d6 damage per level of the highest level fire spell you have memorized.
Otherwise I'd suggest Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords, which is where they essentially prototyped the 4th edition rules in 3.5. Fair warning, though, the three classes in ToB are pretty overpowered compared to the base classes in PHB. There's practically no reason to ever play a Paladin when you could play a Crusader, or play a Fighter when you can play a Warblade, for instance...
There's also the Warlock class (from Complete Arcane, I think?), which has a ridiculous ranged touch attack blast every round and a bunch of "invocation" spell-like abilities... I don't like the class, though, because a player in one of my groups always plays very munchkiny builds with it...
See, I was going to pre-order Dragon Age, but I put it back on the shelf when I saw it wasn't multiplayer. I have a stack of single player games waiting for me to finish. I want something to play with my wife, not something to sit alone and play by myself.
I was pretty excited at the opportunity to have another D&D-based PC game to play w/ my wife and friends...
Then I read that... :(
That's not what this study is showing, however. It's not showing "Teacher A's students are consistently bad." it's showing "Teacher A's students are consistently WORSE after a year in his or her class than they were beforehand."
Because the students aren't being paid to be there.
Isn't that what this study did?
I know this is Slashdot and all... Could you be bothered to even slightly learn anything about the source's methods?
The study tracks scores from year to year... And it shows that there are certain teachers who consistently bring scores down, and other teachers who consistently bring scores up. Since students are assigned practically randomly, if it was all down to how hard the students tried we wouldn't see that.
Oh there's not always ZERO consequences to their political careers... At least, not when they prosecute rich white kids... Though, really, one day in jail isn't enough for such ridiculous prosecutor misconduct...
That's funny... I was homeschooled (primarily due to not wanting to deal with the bullshit "social interaction" of schoolyard bullies), and the head developer where I work came to me to ask me to coach other developers on "people skills" because she felt I was one of the best examples of good "people skills" on the team... Weird how my anecdotal evidence completely contradicts yours, isn't it?
Or, you could say, it TAKES freedom from users (ie: developers using a library) that the BSD license does not.
Not saying BSD is better, just saying GPL doesn't give "more freedoms" on a whole, it just assigns them to different people.
That Rewards type card gets you a $5 coupon for $150 in purchases. So you have to spend more money there to enjoy your 3.33% "reward". The B&N card gets you 10% off everything. The B&N card also has weekly coupons like $5 off a $50 purchase (giving you effectively 20% off a $50 purchase) that are sent to you whether or not you use the card.
You can't really complain about the borders card... Any free discount is a good discount. But the B&N card will save a frequent shopper significantly more over time, but won't provide any benefit to occasional customers. If you don't shop there that often, you can give them an e-mail address and they will mail you free coupons once or twice a week, usually on new releases and seasonal items (like the current one is for back-to-school supplies)... Which I'd think would average out to be just about as good as the free Borders Bucks program.
This was like five years ago, so I haven't the faintest idea what they charged me. The disk for $8 on Amazon didn't exist, then. I also get an employee discount, but that's not the point. Point is, the majority of people STILL DON'T order online, and probably over half of those people NEVER will. So until they're all dead, a service like B&N's music/movie section will have a use... But not enough of one to survive on its own (see: Suncoast)
Also Amazon has been very hit-or-miss for me. I've ordered CDs, been charged, then told "We expect your order to ship in six weeks!" I've also ordered other merchandise via Amazon on two separate occasions only to get angry e-mails from the merchant wanting to know why I'm placing orders for out-of-stock merchandise, and telling me that I need to pay more attention... Still never got a Revoltech Lazengann :(
I'd kill for a -50 DIAF mod right now.
I kid, nothing but love...
but go DIAF...
My wife is a lead at our local B&N, so let me see if I can enlighten you a bit...
Paying $25 for a B&N membership does make a lot of sense for some people. It's a 10% discount on everything bought there (including the coffee and ON TOP of the 30-40% discount on things like new hardcovers), so if you spend $251.00 in a year at B&N, you've made money back. Now most people WON'T spend $250.00 a year there, but there are people who regularly spend over $250.00 a MONTH in there, and not taking the card would be insane. My wife has been flabbergasted by customers who are making a $500.00 purchase and won't take the card (essentially getting paid $25 to take it) because "You don't have to pay for Borders' card!" Last I checked, Borders' card is a "Rewards Card" type deal that eventually gives you a gift certificate after so many dollars worth of purchases as opposed to a flat discount, so I can understand why you don't have to pay for it... Removing the $25 fee, though, would be functionally equivalent to reducing their income by 10%, which doesn't seem to be a smart move for a chain trying to stay in business...
Secondly, the CD and DVD section isn't there to sell you the latest popular movies/albums (though they happily eat up the obscene profits from people buying them there). Why would you buy Avatar from them for $30 when it's available at Best Buy for $22 (Or the Wal-Mart double disc pack for $20)? What they do provide is an insanely large back-catalog of old/obscure films and audio. The kid at Best Buy looked at me cross-eyed when I asked him to order me "Hard Boiled" ("Order? You mean like online? And what's 'Hard Boiled'?"), while B&N offered for me to have it shipped to my house or brought in for in-store-pickup. Want that ten disc set of great violen concerts at Carnegie Hall? Good luck finding that Best Buy or Sam Goody, but you'd better believe B&N can get it for you. Looking for indie albums with very small releases? They can get it shipped to you from the store where that artists plays. Yes, plays, as in B&N music sections go out of their way to stock local artists and bring them in for signings and performances.
So I completely understand why B&N's membership service and Music section are not for you, but believe me when I say that there ARE people who enjoy them very much.
No, don't move the goalposts. What I specifically said was that the waste problem was made up. What we're calling "waste" is, for the most part, very useful material that can be further used for power generation in addition to numerous medical and scientific applications. Burying it in the ground is exactly the WRONG thing to do with it. In the past we HAVE successfully reprocessed spent fuel and extracted the useful bits out of it. The reason people are scared of the process is we didn't call it "reprocessing" so much as "making atomic bombs," but it doesn't have to be used for that.
Once we've extracted the useful bits (which make up the vast majority of the "waste" mass), then we can talk about storage.
Oh wait, except that we don't have to. The left-over low level crap can be further used in things like pebble-bed reactor designs, so we've reduced our "waste" footprint even further.
The final remaining miniscule amount can be glassified and stored in some dry tomb somewhere.
And saying "No one has actually done this before!" is a lousy argument for not doing something--if it's your only argument.
I fail to see how that in any way invalidates what I said.
Until the sun sets, which is when a lot of demand happens, and suddenly solar isn't producing any more. This is fine for coal/natural gas/nuclear plants and even (in most cases) hydroelectric plants, as we just turn the dial up on them and get more electricity out of them. We can't do that with solar or wind power, as we don't have any control over how much they produce at any given time. Hence my comment about storage--depending on solar/wind will require massive investment in energy storage and require a major reworking of how we handle demand on the network. So, yes, it does matter where the power comes from.
Also, unless I missed some really amazing developments, solar does require materials with which to actually build the panels, some of which are not nice. Saying it's ecologically free isn't quite the truth. Better? Sure, but poisons and fossil fuels are still used in their production.
Yes, I agree, we're being idiots. So let's stop being stupid and SAVE HUMAN CIVILIZATION! The tech already exists, we did it in the past--all that's stopping us is stupid policy decisions, not any technical hurdles.
Yeah, except the case you're linking to is a poster child for NOT how to dispose of the waste. Piling up barrels haphazardly into an area where ground water flows in and out is monumentally stupid. That's why I used the word "glassified" and gave an example of Yucca Mountain.
And yet despite the insurance costs, nuclear will still be cheaper and probably more sustainable and will not require a complete reworking of our power network. Solar and Wind require STORAGE capabilities, of which we have NONE. Our power distribution is entirely based on increasing PRODUCTION to meet demand, not STORING energy to offset future demand spikes. Nuclear reactors will fit directly into our current network without requiring any massive changes in how we do things.
Also, don't call up the spectre of Chernobyl. If I wanted to cause billions of dollars of damage via sabotage (which is practically what that event was), I don't need a nuclear reactor to do it. A large chemical plant or oil pipeline will suffice.
Waste disposal is a made up problem. That "waste" is very useful. Reprocessing it recovers almost all of the original fissionable mass, and the other products have medical and scientific applications. The remaining low-level crap can be glassified and dropped into a Yucca Mountain like storage depot (except that people's ignorance regarding nuclear waste and radioactivity makes them panic about that).
I'll have to respectfully disagree. Though your misunderstanding is probably my own fault in lack of explanation.
I do find other's lives to be equally valuable to my own--in fact, probably of greater value in many cases. I would be very saddened by someone throwing themselves in front of my car as they were someone who needed help.
A mugger holding someone up via the threatened use of lethal force, however, has forfeited any value their life once held to me. They are threatening the most sacred right of another sentient being for material gain. It is BECAUSE of the value I place on their victim's life that I consider the mugger to be worthless scum to be scraped off of humanity's collective boot.
Actually after further research it seems my fuzzy memory may be confusing the Zapper's mode of operation with the Super Scope's.
Well, no crap! They might damage your car! And when they're dead, who's gonna pay for it?
Seriously, though, apples and oranges. Hitting the person diving in front of your car is putting yourself in danger (though swerving to miss him or her may be putting others in danger, something to think about...) Shooting the dumb fuck who decided your money was worth more than his life is taking yourself out of danger. No comparison.
From a cursory glance I fail to see how Evernote will help me in keeping track of other people's documentation, which is hosted/updated on their websites... Evernote also lacks a Linux client (and OneNote is a Microsoft product, so fat chance on ever getting Linux support there...)
Maybe I don't understand, but I don't see how my use-case fits their purpose, or how using them would be better than what I'm currently using.
Yeah, the light gun was a glorious hack that took advantage of knowing exactly what scan lines the ducks were flashing on to work... So any kind of delay will make it not work at all, I'm sure.
Wow, I'll be sad when Duck Hunt can no longer be played... Oh well, that's what emulation is for. :D